Honor and Duty (45 page)

“Accepted by who? By whom?” I asked.

“The wives of my father’s American business associates.”

I nodded. I looked at the sunroom ceiling windows. “This is just like the Weapons Room and the bad flicks in the gym.”

She smiled. “I enjoy West Point. It’s high theater. I enjoy it because I see it through your eyes.”

“What’s your father like?”

“You mentioned honor.”

I was never good in a chair. I stood and leaned against the windows. She stood close to me, and I looked at her face. She looked as good from the side as from the front. She turned and watched me study her. My heart surging, I leaned forward and kissed her gently. Her lips were soft. I liked the well-defined ridge on her lower lip. My heart boomed like one of Odin’s summer thunderstorms.

“I missed your smell,” I said, our faces very close.

“Chanel Number Five?” she said softly.

“Relish,” I said.

She smiled. Her pale skin seemed healthier. She kissed me, testing my restraint, tasting my interest in her, a chef at her stove, making her recipe boil. Her lips were soft peaches and sweet apricots, and I made a sound that merged purring, mewing, and moaning. She stopped, licking her lips, breathing deeply. She delicately cleared her throat. “I like your smell. It’s Chinese.”

I kissed her, gently folding her into me. She held me with surprising strength, pushing my cheek onto the cold pane. Her kiss was so sweet, her embrace so passionate, that I thought we were still kissing when I realized she had said, “Ding Kai … what about honor …” I was going to utter something declarative like “uh” when her lips returned urgently. “… and duty?” she said into my mouth, her lips warm, breathing fast, lilacs in spring while the snow fell and the ocean roared silently beyond the cold pane that framed my warm cheek. I
tasted her and her mouth was honey and my blood was a thick confection as she moaned while subjecting me to her alchemy.

“Oh, sweet God,” she murmured, opening her mouth to me and we fit perfectly and I felt I knew all about her and about sublimity as she wrapped herself tightly against me. I was being transformed. I was sliding away from all I knew. My heart pounded and left me, for her.

“I thought,” she breathed, “you knew nothing about girls.”

“Something,” I said. “Not … nothing.” Again we kissed. She breathed on me like butterflies in spring and we kissed slowly in a void of time. Her hands caressed my back, running over my neck and shoulders to my arms. She squeezed them, kissing me more desperately, moaning, and she pulled away, breathing deeply through her nose, licking her lips, looking deeply into my eyes. “Arms are so hard … want to talk. About honor.” I kissed her again, wanting to go fast, knowing that we should go slowly.

“Why … ask me?” she murmured against my mouth.

“Smarter … older,” I said, not thinking, amazed I could speak and kiss at the same time.

She pulled back. “Fine thing to say,” she said clearly.

I had tied up. “You
are
smarter. You wouldn’t have said that.”

She smiled. “You kiss very well.” She licked her lips. “For a dummy.” She stepped away, picked up the teacups and gave me mine. They rattled in high clinking notes. She sat down. I breathed.

“So talk, Dummy
Syensheng
,” Mister Dummy, she said.

It was very tough. Closing my eyes made it easier. Honor and duty. I took a deep breath.

“Pearl, we have an Honor Code. ‘A cadet does not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.’ ”

“Vassar has an honor code,” she said.

“You go to Vassar?”

She nodded.

“I thought you went to something like night school.”

“I didn’t want you to think that I’m rich,” she said.

“Pearl, I don’t think you’re rich. You’re
past
rich. So how come you wanted to hide this?” I asked.

“My father’s wealth has been a liability to me,” she said. “We’ll talk of this later. Tell me why you’re worried about honor.”

I gathered my thoughts and explained the basics of Major Maher’s request for help.

“Ding Kai, why’s this Honor Code so important? There’s little cheating at Vassar, but it happens. Copying term papers by a few marginal students. But you talk about it as if it were so serious. Your Honor Code sounds like the old days. You know, Chinese legalism.” She made the motion of slitting the throat; Chinese justice meted out death for most offenses. “I think expulsion for knowing about cheating is very unfair, and even unrealistic.”

“It’s West Point. The Code’s the hardest. Pearl, it’s like Guan Yu honoring his promise to free Ts’ao Ts’ao, the great evil one, even though it’d later kill him.” Ts’ao Ts’ao was the powerful, charismatic minister who illegitimately sought to be emperor during the Three Kingdoms, after the fall of the great Han dynasty. In Chinese lore, he was the equivalent of the Western devil, whose very name inspired superstitious fear.

“Guan Yu was honorable. But Ding Kai, he’s from an old fable.”

“Pearl, you know the Hanlin Academy, the
Wen-lin
, right?”

“The Culture Forest, the Forest of Pens?”

“Yes! West Point’s the Hanlin. We took the pledge of the brothers of different blood in the Peach Orchard by the Yangtze
kang
, except it was at Battle Monument by the Hudson
kang.
Our honor allows us to lead men in battle, to protect others, even unknown and unrelated by blood.”

“It sounds quite romantic,” she said. I couldn’t be sure she was being totally sincere.

“Here’s an analogy: Guan Yu made the pledge to his brothers. What if he made a pledge to turn in any cheaters, and the cheater turned out to be one of his brothers—like Liu Bei or Chang Fei? My Honor Code, Pearl, says I have to turn him in.”

Pearl Yee’s great, penetrating eyes expanded and her mouth opened. “Ding Kai—that
is
like Chinese honor.”

“Yes. It requires Confucian perfection, larger than any one of us. We’re all mutually responsible for protecting Honor.”

“So—violating the Honor Code is like forfeiting family honor. You’d breach clan duty.”

“Yes,” I said. “Dead on.”

“Oh.” She bit her thumbnail.

“Could I do that for you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, almost to herself, drinking her cold tea and
pouring fresh, then holding the hot cup in both hands. “Guan Yu would protect your school, even if it cost him a brother. He served
chih shan
, moral perfection. Honor is best. I’m surprised that West Point’s focused on honor. When I visited you three weeks ago, I thought your school was the most American place I had seen. It also reminded me of a prison, or a monastery. How can you learn about China there?” She sighed. “Who could guess that under all those white faces, is the heart of K’ung Fu-tzu? Well, you should help your professor. Get the cheaters, whoever they are. Ding Kai, please be careful. You know what happened to Guan Yu on the moral path. He had his head handed to him.”

“Thank you, Pearl,” I said, looking into her confident gaze. “You synthesized the Code.”

In the background, “Ode to Joy” ended its fifth or sixth rendition. Now a chorus of heavenly women’s voices sang, “Glo—–ria, in excelsis Deo, Glo—ria, in excelsis Deo.”

“I thought your father wasn’t Christian,” I said.

“He isn’t. I am. Now it’s my turn. Let me tell you about my father. Oh, Ding Kai! You’ve eaten all the crumpets. It was a whole package!”

Townsend Fan Yee was the firstborn son of Brandon Kow Yee of Taishan Shipping Company Ltd., Singapore. Like his father, Townsend had attended Oxford, had more than one wife, and had inherited millions.

“He has more than one wife?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” said Pearl. “My mother is his first wife. My brother is the son of his second wife.”

“Does that bother you?” I asked. “How does your mother feel?”

“He is my father,” she said. “And she is his wife.”

“
Shiao
, filial piety,” I said. “The Three Followings and the Four Virtues.”

“Of course,” she said. For a moment, her beautiful, stilled face looked like one of the cool, expensive objets d’art in the entryway.

“I have trouble seeing you walking with small feet, five steps behind your husband.”

She smiled hopefully. “I intend him to take long and powerful strides, to stay with me.”

Mr. Yee was a rich man who feared financial risk. As was appropriate to a man with two wives, he had a mistress in New
York and another in Singapore. He changed houses the way I changed the cotton liner in my dress-gray tunic.

She said that she represented his only entrepreneurial impulse. In return for her service as chum for trolling business sharks, Pearl had Zee
taitai
, the lifetime Chinese maid who had followed her to Vassar, an expense account, a Thunderbird convertible, and open charges in most of the stores that counted in New York.

“Is it a good trade?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s the question.”

The father had arranged four engagements for Pearl. When it became clear that she would scuttle them, he helped her break them. Pearl knew that she was becoming a sought-after prize, appealing to the gambling spirit that lives within all men, and increasing the business bounty that would be paid to her father for her hand.

I was going to have dinner with a slave girl and her master.

“He’ll ask you the same two questions he posed to my suitors while he was selecting them. A question about politics, to see if you’re controlled by it. He likes neutrals but can accept moderates.” She looked at me, wondering. “He’s a Republican. I’m a Democrat. What are your politics?” she asked.

“I’m an independent. I like Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. I support the war in Vietnam. I like the ACLU and I hate Communists.”

“Well,” she said, “aren’t you easy to categorize! He’ll ask you a question about money, to see if you’d risk or conserve. He is most assuredly a conservator. The suitors came from approved families, and he’ll ask about that. I hope you tell him more than you’ve told me.”

“Does he think I want to marry you?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “But you don’t have to.”

“I can’t imply that if it’s not true,” I said.

She looked at me, both elegant eyebrows raised. “Guan Yu and the Hanlin, the
Wen-lin.
Chinese honor, right? But you’re an American romantic. You want to marry for love.”

“I don’t want to marry at all,” I said.

“Then do what you wish,” she said. She stood and leaned against the windows, crossing her trim ankles, the sea frothy and greenish behind her while snow fell on the wintering trees. “I’d be very nice to you,” she said, thinking things I could only imagine. “And you’d be rich. But you have to answer his questions. Just, please be nice.”

She had a face that could relaunch the Greek fleet and make rational men fight each other with sharp swords for ten years. People would think highly of me for having won a woman so gorgeous. A few weeks ago Pearl had made me reveal that I was weak for being unloved. I blew out my breath. The admission had caused Pearl to pity me the way Clint ached for a busted bird. Crying in front of her. Be nice. I’m rich. What a lot of crap. Doesn’t matter.

“I don’t like it,” I said. “I don’t want nice and I don’t deserve ‘rich.’ I don’t care about money. You didn’t tell me you were setting me up for a marriage exam.” I blew out breath. “News about my family would sink all this, anyway.”

She closed her eyes in pain and turned her back to me. Slowly her back stiffened, with either anger or resolve, or both. “Just be my friend, Ding Kai,” she said in a very controlled voice. “Do not lie—do not pretend to want marriage. But please, be kindhearted.”

The rich, captivating aromas of a Chinese banquet and “Joy to the World” filled the entryway. Pearl came down the white staircase in an embroidered, high-collared, pale opaline
chi-pol
, cheongsam, which fit her snugly about the neck and hung straight down from the shoulders to touch a matching pair of satin pumps. Her hair was wrapped atop her head. The long dress set up her radiant face and elegant, deep green jade earrings. I stopped breathing and adjusted my Academy tie.

“These were birthday presents, two years ago, from my father. I’m wearing them for the first time.” She seemed vulnerable in her noble outfit, smiling in recognition of my kindhearted look. She touched my hand. She was more nervous than I.

A narrow, white-haired man with a hard, lean face approached us. He wore a precisely tailored charcoal smoking jacket with velvet lapels. He walked carefully, without hurry, on slippered feet that made a Chinese-like, hissing sound on an indigo carpet. He was almost my height. Pearl slightly inclined her head.

“Father, this is Ding Kai, from San Francisco. His family is from Shang-hai. Ding Kai, this is my father, Mr. Townsend Fan Yee.”

“I am honored to meet you, sir.” His hand was like soft deerskin, making my calloused, weightroom-beaten, pugilist’s palm seem like a lizard’s. His large, widely spaced eyes were
of black ice. He had a face with sharp cheekbones, a large nose, and tight, dark skin beneath a precisely brushed head of medium-length white hair. I saw the source of Pearl’s jawline. His mouth was wide, the chin broad. He looked rich and smelled rich, and looked at me the way I inspected Plebes, seeking error.

“Strong,” he said in a guttural voice.

“Like ox,” I said, and Pearl covered her mouth.

Watkins served the shark-fin soup at a pace akin to Pee Wee McCloud’s thick speech. Mr. Yee delivered his questions like a New York cabbie.

“What do you know of business?” he asked.

Leadership was everything. “Management’s the prime factor,” I said.

“Can you run a business?” he asked.

I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Brains keep Chinese alive in a foreign world,” he said. “Agree?”

“And honor,” I said. “K’ung Fu-tzu liked honor.”

“Do you approve of racial integration?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Even we Han are really a polyglot race.”

He leaned forward, although his daughter did it better. “What if this costs us our traditions?”

“Then they are expendable.”